**Date:** 1915
**Source:** Lenin Miscellany, vol. 27
**Pages:** 289-292

Excerpts and notes relating to imperialism.
K. Kautsky ("The National State, etc.") [3] [293]
Lenz
[5] [297]
"Financial capital in Russia"
[13] [307]
Barron's book on war (NB)
[15] [311]
Lenz on contemporary war
[17] [311]

K. KAUTSKY ("THE NATIONAL STATE, ETC.")

"The National State, Imperialist State, and League of States" by K. Kautsky. Nuremberg 1915. (50 Pfennigs). (pp. 80).

In § 1 — "Something on Democracy and the National State" K. Kautsky takes issue with the right-winger (Winnig) and the left-winger from Halle (from the *Volksblatt* [People's Paper] in Halle), who speak of the obsolescence of the principle "of the right of every people to national self-determination" (p. 5) (in the declaration of August 4). K. Kautsky sides with the center on this question and chews over the old story about the connection between democracy and the national state.

On this subject, among other things, he argues against "primitive democracy" and "direct popular legislation" (8), and to "primitive democracy" he assigns "its more energetic variety, the mass strike" (8).

We, he says, are not for the status quo (14), but for another means of breaking out of national confines...

"The proletariat cannot free itself by virtue of the fact that individual strata of it, engaged in certain professions or living in certain regions, will also enjoy the fruits of exploitation and oppression. This rather means a weakening of its position" (16)...

and not a word about the conclusion from this!! Sophist!

On p. 17 there is a fraudulent distortion of the position of the left. And they, he claims (like the right-wingers), agree as to the inevitability of imperialism, but demand in response the "immediate implementation" (17) of socialism...

"This looks very radical, but it is only (!!!) suitable for driving everyone who does not believe in the immediate practical realization of socialism into the camp of imperialism" (17).

What follows is the most vulgar rubbish about society being an organism, not a mechanism, etc.—childish nonsense (with hints that "national sentiments" (18) are strong among workers)—with the conclusion that from the inevitability of imperialism there does not follow the absurdity of struggle against it "within this (capitalist) mode of production" (21).

Against imperialism, for other means of capital expansion (besides colonies) — "petty bourgeois and peasants, even many capitalists and intellectuals" (21)...

petty
scoundrel!!